Oscar's
elder brother, a journalist and poet, was educated, like Oscar, at
Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, Ulster, where he was known for his
conviviality. A former classmate described "Willie" (as
everyone called him) as "clever, erratic and full of
vitality." In 1871, when Oscar went on to Trinity College, Dublin,
he joined Willie, who was already a student there, where they shared
rooms in their second and third years. 1876, Willie contributed poems to
Kottabos, the College magazine
that he also edited, One of his poems, "Salome," a favorite
subject among 9th-century French writers and artists who
depicted Salome as a femme fatale,
may have aroused Oscar's early interest in her complex personality:

Fearless
and reckless; for all maiden shame
Strange passion-poisons throbbing overcame
As every eye was riveted on me,
And every soul was mine, mine utterly -

Another
of Willie's poems, "Faustine," fuses the eroticism and
paganism associated with Swinburne (who, in 1862, had written a poem
with that title). Willie's poetic gifts, however, were slender: 
bright jewels my fair bosom deck, / And Love's hot lips - close press'd
- cling fast to mine ....

After
graduating from Trinity College, Willie studied law, was called to the
bar but apparently did not practice. After Sir William's death in 1876,
Lady Wilde and Willie moved to London in early 1879, where he became a
journalist, serving as drama critic for Punch
and Vanity Fair, leader writer for the Daily Telegraph, and editor of Christmas numbers for several
magazines. When Oscar married in 1884, Lady Wilde urged him to establish
"a settled life at once. Literature and lectures and parliament -
receptions 5 o'clock for the world - and small dinners of genius and
culture at 8 o'clock. Charming this life, begin it at once - take
warning by Willie". By this time, Willie,
irresponsible about money, was fatally attracted to alcohol.

On
4 October 1891, now 39, Willie married Mrs. Frank Leslie, née Miriam
Folline (1836-1914), proprietor of the Frank Leslie Publishing Co. in
New York. It was she who had approached Oscar with the idea that he give
a series of lectures in America. The brief courtship between Willie and
Mrs. Leslie led to a brief marriage. Initially captivated by Willie's
joviality and wit, Mrs. Leslie soon discovered his fondness for drink
and his uselessness to her business. He spent much of his time at the
Lotus Club on Fifth Avenue gossiping about London society or reciting
parodies of Oscar's poetry (an indication of hostility towards his more
successful brother). Within a year, Mrs. Leslie began divorce
proceedings: on 10 June 1893, the divorce was granted on the grounds of
drunkenness and adultery.

Willie,
who had returned to London early in 1892, when Oscar was being hailed
for his success in Lady
Windermere's Fan, probably wrote the review that appeared, unsigned,
in Vanity Fair (27 Feb.1892),
for which he had been a theatre reviewer: the play was "brilliantly
unoriginal," he wrote, but the dialogue was "uniformly bright,
graceful, and flowing." After running through the plot and pointing
to some of its banalities, he nevertheless calls it "an undeniably
clever piece of work; and even though it has its weaknesses, it reflects
credit on its author." He concludes by declaring: "It is
emphatically a play to see." Oscar, who apparently divined the
author behind the anonymous mask, was currently writing AWoman of No Importance, in which one character remarks: "After
a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations."

Oscar
began giving Willie money, but antagonism between the brothers grew as
Oscar learned that Willie was constantly asking their hard pressed
mother for money. To Max Beerbohm, they seemed to be mirror images, as
indeed his cartoons of the brothers indicate. In a letter to the painter
Will Rothenstein, Beerbohm writes: "...did I tell you that I saw a
good deal of [Oscar's] brother Willie at Broad stairs? Quell monster!
Dark, oily, suspect yet awfully like Oscar: he has Oscar's coy, carnal
smile & fatuous giggle & not a little of Oscar's esprit. But he
is awful - a veritable tragedy of family-likeness".

In
January 1894, Willie married Lily Lees (1859-1922), with whom he had
been living. Kevin O'Brien characterizes her as "an emotional woman
with a tendency to early panic[;] she believed (incorrectly) that she
was pregnant" and sought a powder to end the pregnancy. The
marriage caused further grief to Lady Wilde when the couple moved in
with her. She wrote to Oscar on 4 February 1894, to inform him of the
marriage: "Miss Lees has but £50 a year and this just dresses her. She can give
nothing to the house and Willie is always in a state of utter poverty.
So all is left upon me".
Willie and Lily had their only child in July 1895, Dorothy Ierne.

The
relationship between Oscar and Willie found its way into The
Importance of Being Earnest, which involves two characters
pretending to be brothers (Jack, the protective guardian; Algy, the
alleged spendthrift) who discover that they are, in fact, brothers. At
the time that Oscar was writing the play, Lady Wilde wrote a lengthy
letter urging him to be reconciled with Willie, who, she said, was
"sickly and extravagant." She was "miserable
at the present position of [her] two sons" and "at the
general belief that you hate your
brother." She then urges Oscar to hold out his hand to Willie,
a gesture repeated several times in the letter: "Come then &
offer him yr. hand in good faith - & begin a new course of
action". In Earnest, when
Algernon, posing as the wicked "Ernest," arrives at Jack's
country house, Cecily urges Jack: "However badly he may have
behaved to you in the past he is still your brother. You couldn't be so
heartless as to disown him .... you will shake hands with him, won't
you, Uncle Jack?" Though, at first, Jack refuses, he acquiesces
shortly thereafter. If not in life, then in art, Oscar was willing to
comply with his mother's wishes.

With
Oscar's arrest and first trial in April 1895, Willie (according to his
own account) provided shelter to his brother, who had been unable to
find rooms in London, though Willie probably dramatized the scene:
Willie reportedly said that Oscar "fell down on my threshold like a
wounded stag" - a brief moment of moral triumph for the elder
brother. Willie, defending his brother, wrote to Bram Stoker
(1847-1912), who had married Florence Balcombe (1858-1937), once courted
by Oscar: "Bram, my friend, poor Oscar was not as bad as people thought him. He was led astray by his Vanity -
& conceit, & he was so 'got at' that he was weak enough to be
guilty  of indiscretions and follies - that is all....
Ibelieve this thing will help to purify him body & soul".

When
Oscar was released from prison in 1897, Willie was not there to greet
him. On 13 March 1899, alcoholism ended Willie's life. Informed of his
brother's death by Robert Ross, Oscar, now living in self-imposed exile
in France, pronounced his final words on him: "I suppose it had
been expected for some time.... Between him and me there had been, as
you know, wide chasms for many years. Requiescat
in Pace".